Adnan Abidi is an Indian photographer based in

New Delhi New Delhi (; ) is the Capital city, capital of India and a part of the Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Parliament ...

. He has been part of three Pulitzer Prize-winning packages for photography as part of ''

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

''' photography team.

Early life and Inspiration

Adnan's interest in photography began in his childhood. At age 11, he joined a mobile van library and used to borrow comic books. One day, he picked up a picture postcard book by veteran photographer S. Paul, which sparked his curiosity about photography, and he convinced his father to buy him a

Yashica was a Japanese manufacturer of cameras, lenses, and film editing equipment active from 1949 until 2005 when its then-owner, Kyocera, ceased production. It acquired the lens manufacturer Tomioka (Tomioka Optical Co., Ltd). In 2008, the Yashica ...

point-and-shoot camera. Though Adnan received no formal training, he learned through trial and error with guidance from senior photographers. Adnan has mentioned that in his first job at a local newswire agency, he was often given only limited leftover film, which he credits for teaching him "the habit of being selective".

Work

Adnan started his career as a darkroom assistant in 1997. He worked at Pan-Asia News Agency, Indo Photo News, and

Press Trust of India The Press Trust of India Ltd., commonly known as PTI, is the largest news agency in India. It is headquartered in New Delhi and is a nonprofit cooperative among more than 450 Indian newspapers. It has over 500 full-time employees , including abo ...

. Eventually, he started working for

as a stringer and was later given a staff position. He has captured several challenging situations over the course of his career, including 1999 Kandahar hijack of Indian Airlines flight IC814,

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami On 26 December 2004, at 07:58:53 local time ( UTC+7), a major earthquake with a magnitude of 9.2–9.3 struck with an epicentre off the west coast of Aceh in northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The undersea megathrust earthquake, known in the sci ...

2005 Kashmir earthquake An earthquake occurred at on 8 October 2005 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, a territory under Pakistan. Its epicenter was 19 km northeast of the city of Muzaffarabad, and 90 km north north-east of Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan, ...

, the 2011–2012 Maldives political crisis, 2013 Cyclone Phailin in Orissa,

2015 Nepal earthquake The April 2015 Nepal earthquake (also known as the Gorkha earthquake) killed 8,962 people and injured 21,952 across the countries of Nepal, India, China and Bangladesh. It occurred at on Saturday 25 April 2015, with a magnitude of Moment magni ...

and the

2016 Dhaka attack Sixteen or 16 may refer to: *16 (number) *one of the years 16 BC, AD 16, 1916, 2016 Films * ''Pathinaaru'' or ''Sixteen'', a 2010 Tamil film * ''Sixteen'' (1943 film), a 1943 Argentine film directed by Carlos Hugo Christensen * ''Sixteen'' (20 ...

Awards

In 2017, Abidi covered the exodus of Rohingyas and he and his colleague

Danish Siddiqui Danish Siddiqui (19 May 1983 – 16 July 2021) was an Indian photojournalist based in Delhi, who used to lead the national Reuters multimedia team and was Chief Photographer India. He received his first 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Pulitzer Prize for ...

became the first Indians to win a

Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography The Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography is one of the American Pulitzer Prizes annually awarded for journalism. It recognizes a distinguished example of feature Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature recognition, could be a hole, poc ...

as part of the photography staff of Reuters. He won the 2020

Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography The Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography is one of the American Pulitzer Prizes annually awarded for journalism. From 2000 it has used the "breaking news" name but it is considered a continuation of the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photogr ...

for his coverage of the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests. In 2022, Abidi's work was part of another Pulitzer Prize-winning photography package which covered the

COVID-19 pandemic in India The COVID-19 pandemic in India is a part of the COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide pandemic of COVID-19, coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). As of , according to Indian government ...

, increasing his tally to three Pulitzer Prizes. In 2022 Abidi’s work titled ‘Covid Horror in Delhi’ won NPPA Best of Photojournalism first place in the Breaking News Story category.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abidi, Adnan Living people Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography winners Pulitzer Prize for Photography winners Indian photojournalists Photographers from Delhi 21st-century Indian Muslims Reuters people Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century Indian photographers